FEMA in Crisis as Hurricane Season Begins: $15 Billion in Aid Blocked, 20% of Staff Gone

Hurricane season officially kicked off June 1, and the agency responsible for keeping you safe when a major storm hits is, by most accounts, in rough shape. A new CNN investigation lays out how FEMA ended up here — and the short version is: a year of political chaos, funding bottlenecks, and mass staff departures have left the agency scrambling heading into one of the most dangerous times of year.

More than $15 billion in disaster funds got stalled, and roughly 20% of the workforce walked out the door. That's not a natural disaster — that's an organizational one.

Here's what happened. Back in December, even a Republican congressman's office was firing off emails with subject lines like "Five Alarm Fire," complaining that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's grip on FEMA was blocking a $2.5 million wildfire-prep grant — one of thousands of grants stalled in the same logjam.

The bottleneck had a specific cause. Noem had issued a directive requiring her personal sign-off on any department expense over $100,000 — which sounds fiscally responsible until you realize that FEMA processes thousands of such payments constantly. The result was a massive pileup.

The staffing picture is equally concerning. FEMA has lost nearly 20% of its staff since Trump took office, and the top echelon of career employees — the experienced people who actually know how to run a disaster response — is down 35%. These are the first federal workers on the ground during a disaster. As one former senior FEMA official put it: "The regional offices are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won't be there."

FEMA's own acting chief tried to push back — and paid for it. When the agency's leader broke from the administration's script at a congressional hearing and publicly defended FEMA against elimination plans, he was escorted out of headquarters the next day.

The political blowback eventually got loud enough that even Republicans turned on Noem. The flashpoint was the prolonged hold on recovery funds for North Carolina, still reeling from Hurricane Helene. Republican Senators Ted Budd and Thom Tillis publicly condemned Noem — Tillis told her directly at a March hearing "you failed at FEMA" and urged her to resign. Two days later, she was fired.

Now, FEMA is in damage-control mode. The Trump administration is actually rehiring disaster response staff it recently let go, saying the reversals are necessary ahead of hurricane season — though only around 200 employees lost their jobs and are being asked to come back, minus those who retired or moved on.

The administration's official stance? A DHS spokesperson insists the department is ready for hurricane season, saying "FEMA is leaner, faster and laser-focused" on supporting partners. But people who've actually run the agency aren't buying it. Sources say it will likely take years to undo the damage, and Pete Gaynor — who led FEMA during Trump's first term — said flatly: "All of those things made the mission more impossible."

Why does this matter to you personally? If a major hurricane, wildfire, or flood hits your community this summer, the federal safety net you've always counted on to show up is thinner than it's been in years. Some states are already tightening their own budgets and laying off local emergency management staff whose departments rely on FEMA money — meaning the problem isn't just federal, it's trickling down to your county and city level. There's also a backlog of 23 pending disaster requests as of late May — the largest on record for that date since 2017 — and Trump has taken an average of 62 days to approve or deny requests, nearly double Biden's pace.

The good news, if there is any: NOAA recently predicted three to six hurricanes this summer, which is below the annual average of seven. A quiet season would buy FEMA time to stabilize. But emergency managers aren't counting on luck.